The world’s oldest stone axe was made in Australia almost 50,000 years ago

Carpenter’s Gap where the fragment was found. Image: Australian Archaeology.

A piece from the world’s oldest known stone axe has been found in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

The fragment of polished basalt is about the size of a thumbnail and dates back to the Stone Age, 45,000 to 49,000 years ago, about the same time humans arrived in Australia.

The artifact is more than 10,000 years older than any previous finds and shows that the technology of first Australians was not as simple as previously suggested.

This discovery is the earliest known example of a hafted axe — an axe head with a handle attached — which would have been used for a variety of tasks including making spears and chopping down trees or peeling off bark.

“Since there are no known axes in Southeast Asia during the Ice Age, this discovery shows us that when humans arrived in Australia they began to experiment with new technologies, inventing ways to exploit the resources they encountered in the new Australian landscape,” says Peter Hiscock of the University of Sydney.